Summer in a glass

Long a neglected category, it is now coming into its own across the world as a versatile wine that blends freshness and vibrancy of white wines with some of the complexity and characteristics of reds

Strawberries, cherries and an angel’s kiss in spring. My summer wine is really made from all these things,” went the lyrics of that 1967 song by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood. We were teenagers in school, listening to this, and the early Beatles songs, on a beat-up radio — songs of a bygone era.. Wine was an unknown thing. But who knew that the refrain above would so perfectly describe a wine.

The quintessential summer wine is, of course, the rosé. Long a neglected category, it is now coming into its own across the world as a versatile wine that blends the freshness and vibrancy of white wines with some of the complexity and characteristics of reds.

These wines can be produced by any of these three methods: skin contact, Saignée (“bleeding”) and blending a white and red wine. The skin contact method starts with the  crushing of red grapes, but the time allowed for skin contact is much less than in a regular red wine, resulting in a lighter-coloured and lower-alcohol end product. This produces the best-quality rosé and is increasingly being adopted by quality winemakers worldwide.

The Saignée method is actually a technique to get stronger or more tannic reds. This involves drawing off some pink juice early in the production process and fermenting it separately. Lastly, there’s blending a red with a white wine, though this is not encouraged and does not produce rosés of any quality.

Rosé wines can vary in colour from pale orange and various shades of pink and red to almost dark purple, and can be both still as well as sparkling. The wine itself is generally light-bodied, a bit sweeter and lower-alcohol than either reds or whites and combines the best of both categories.

The most well-known (and expensive) rosé is, of course, pink champagne: Krug, Dom Pérignon, Billecart-Salmon, Piper-Heidsieck, Bollinger, Maison Veuve Clicquot and what have you. All of these have been rated over 90 points by Wine Spectator and retail for hundreds of dollars a bottle. 

However, rosé wines that have “gone viral” in the West are regular drinking wines priced at about $20 per bottle. One of the best articles I have read that explains this phenomenon is “You Can Thank Instagram For Your Rosé Obsession” (www.thrillist.com/drink/nation/rose-wine-instagram-obsession).

In India, while all the major wine producers (Sula, Grover and Fratelli) have been making rosé wines for years, this category accounts for only two to three per cent of their sales. Considering that rosé wines can be had both in the afternoon and at night and go well with Indian, continental or even oriental cuisines, this may be surprising. However, there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. Wine-drinking in India is still a newly developing thing and most new wine consumers have enough trouble understanding white and red wines. Rosé wines are something in between and as such not well understood and hence, not chosen.

So this summer try a rosé, one that transcends both astringent whites and tannic reds and offers a unique wine experience. Indian rosé wines available (all below Rs 1,000 per bottle) include Grover Zampa Art Collection Shiraz Rosé, Fratelli M/S Rosé and The Source Grenache Rosé (by Sula). There’s also Boekenhoutskloof’s The Wolftrap Rosé (Rs 1,724 in Bengaluru) that is becoming increasingly popular in the south.

Alok Chandra is a Bengaluru-based wine consultant